It's impossible to leave OS X - there is no competition!

[ostrykolesz]

My 2014 15" MacBook Pro served me well, but it had the CPU voltage issue which caused it to crash all the time, I finally rectified it with a $10 app. Now I somehow cracked my screen. I decided to save some money and decided to try a Windows laptop - a surface Pro 6. The hardware wasn't that bad, Microsoft is getting closer and closer to the level set by Apple - but they are not there yet. Windows is still clunky and buggy. So I returned it and bought a base 2018 15" MacBook Pro. OS X is fluid and responsive. You don't have to pay for Office. And yes, everything just works. The keyboard is fine - I don't mind it (I did get a 4 year warranty - just in case). I still question the decision to remove the USB A port and the SD port - still, there are dongles OS X is the perfect OS with no competition. My old MacBook Pro did not need one system reinstall nor did it slow down with time. Once you go OS X you never...

 

[H2SO4]

My 2014 15" MacBook Pro served me well, but it had the CPU voltage issue which caused it to crash all the time, I finally rectified it with a $10 app. Now I somehow cracked my screen. I decided to save some money and decided to try a Windows laptop - a surface Pro 6. The hardware wasn't that bad, Microsoft is getting closer and closer to the level set by Apple - but they are not there yet. Windows is still clunky and buggy. So I returned it and bought a base 2018 15" MacBook Pro. OS X is fluid and responsive. You don't have to pay for Office. And yes, everything just works. The keyboard is fine - I don't mind it (I did get a 4 year warranty - just in case). I still question the decision to remove the USB A port and the SD port - still, there are dongles OS X is the perfect OS with no competition. My old MacBook Pro did not need one system reinstall nor did it slow down with time. Once you go OS X you never...

You don't have to pay for Office?
You always have to pay for Microsoft Office, there are lots of free alternatives that are WAY better than the office suite offered by Apple. But none provide the triumvirate of professional business level features/performance/compatibility offered by M$, don't kid yourself.
Microsoft have just as powerful strangehold in this area as Apple appear to have with the iPhone.

 

[YaBe]

My 2014 15" MacBook Pro served me well, but it had the CPU voltage issue which caused it to crash all the time, I finally rectified it with a $10 app. Now I somehow cracked my screen. I decided to save some money and decided to try a Windows laptop - a surface Pro 6. The hardware wasn't that bad, Microsoft is getting closer and closer to the level set by Apple - but they are not there yet. Windows is still clunky and buggy. So I returned it and bought a base 2018 15" MacBook Pro. OS X is fluid and responsive. You don't have to pay for Office. And yes, everything just works. The keyboard is fine - I don't mind it (I did get a 4 year warranty - just in case). I still question the decision to remove the USB A port and the SD port - still, there are dongles OS X is the perfect OS with no competition. My old MacBook Pro did not need one system reinstall nor did it slow down with time. Once you go OS X you never...

I beg to differ, while OS X is great is far from what it used to be, AND the margin became very small lately.

Switched to windows a year ago, and apart from the first adjustment period (had the same when switched the ther way) I am now very happy, the machine cost a fraction and offer similar or better specs, and the comptuer looks exactly as a mac (Xiaomi Mi NoteBook Pro), yes it is a "rip off" of their (Apple) design, but I really do not care, i leave the legal stuff to lawyers.

I now have 2 USB c 2 "regular" USB an sd card reader and 2 ssd hd, for like 1/3rd of a macbook pro price, oh and no touchbar / keyboard issue here!

Windows 10 matured a lot, and while not perfect (far from it) to me Apps are what make the difference, but running the same App (Affinity / Adobe / Handbrake / iTunes / Chrome) they all work the same.

1/3 of the Mac price, and 0 of their issue!

yes it is possible, and once you adjust you realize you do not have to spend that ammount of money for a computer, and while yes Apple computer are good, but way overpriced, it's not the 90s anymore ..... I mean if only, those were the days!

 

[MBAir2010]

screw that,  is really frustrating this week,
after my horrible insulting experience at the store, their horrible careless response,
safari crashing on the ipad while watching the masters thru apple TV.
and not being able to play music i added on the ipad,
stalling streaming on the macbook air just now,
i decided to purchase a PC laptop and get out of this trapped, condensed compu-system.

 

[Juicy Box]

I am a lifetime Mac user, and have been a fan for 25 years, but do to various issues with Apple in the past 5-6 years, I have been slowly preparing myself and my family for life outside of the Apple Ecosystem.

One change I have done was to reduce iTunes movies and TV Show purchases, and move my non-DRM collection to PLEX. This might not sound like a big change, but it was for someone that has used iTunes since its launch(BTW I used to like iTunes). i made a few other changes too.

Switching to another computer OS would be a pretty big change for me. I use Windows everyday for work, but I don't like it. It is not as fluid, intuitive, and fast as the Mac OS, but over time, that gap is closing.

10 years ago, I couldn't ever picture switching to Windows, not at all. But, the quality gap between the two OS is closing. I think Windows is getting better while Mac OS started to stumble a few years back.

And yes, everything just works.

This is debatable. IMO, "it just works" and Apple are no longer synonymous.

Windows is still clunky and buggy.

This is true, but the gap is closing.

You don't have to pay for Office.

umm.... What??

Do you mean there are free alternatives? or are you saying Office is free?

 

[2ilent8cho]

I'm IT as my job, and support hundreds of Windows and MacOS clients (as well as Linux and Windows Servers) so i am exposed to all 3 main platforms daily , MacOS is always my preferred go to OS despite running Windows since i was teenager in the 90s and only getting my first Mac in 2011 running Lion. If i could have the Windows NT 4 or Windows 2000 GUI i might be torn back to Windows , but i absolutely loathe the Windows interface now and at home Windows 10 is just a steam launcher. Our whole IT department now have slowly but surely moved to Mac as their preferred choice after years of being Windows only, they have had enough of Windows now, its seen more of a hindrance we have to have purely because of certain programs.

 

[StralyanPithecus]

Another IT manager here that hates windows, even that I was a long time windows user. The last decent windows version was 7, since then everything went south in windows world, still windows server and Microsoft Office lover, but windows 10 is a big pile of crap. I will not switch from mac to windows, and I know there are better in hardware terms better machines using windows, but for me a smooth and stable OS is critical.

 

[tmmacops]

Another IT manager here that hates windows, even that I was a long time windows user. The last decent windows version was 7, since then everything went south in windows world, still windows server and Microsoft Office lover, but windows 10 is a big pile of crap. I will not switch from mac to windows, and I know there are better in hardware terms better machines using windows, but for me a smooth and stable OS is critical.

I agree with this and the post above yours. I’ve done IT since 1990, and have been all in on Mac since 2007.

I’ve been having some issues with Apple hardware as of late; mysterious reboots on MBP and MBA w T2, so trying a Lenovo TP X1. It’s ok, but Windows 10 is meh, and a hot mess to me. Office is much better on Windows, but not sure it’s that much better to completely walk away from MacOS.

I’d love to go back to Windows 2000 interface. One of the best IMHO. Rock solid OS.

I’ll continue to use MBA as my primary driver and keep the Lenovo handy for those times when testing features for testing O365 stuff, or things that are “Windows” only. But the little things that do “Just Work”, do just work on Mac. Can’t say the same for Windows. Things like waking when opening the lid work consistently on Mac. Windows is different every second or third time. Inconsistent UI for some items and apps, etc...

 

[maflynn]

OS X is the perfect OS with no competition

Its perfect? I think that's a bit of an exaggeration.

I have been in IT since the 1980s, which predate windows and PCs and the Macintosh and all I can say is that No OS is perfect. Imo, Windows is better suited for the enterprise then macOS for a variety of reasons. Windows has some nice features, and mac OS is far from perfect.

Most of the posts here are commenting are on personal preference (my post included) and there's nothing wrong with that. Both platforms have their positives and negatives, and unlike the OP, Windows has many positives and likewise macOS some negatives. I've enjoyed macOS but I've largely moved off the platform. The Mac does many things well, and I'm not dumping on that or its abilities and while posting in a I hate windows thread, which is obviously a popular theme on a mac forum, it definitely has a number of things going for it.

btw, macOS isn't bug free, just look at the Mojave forum, I myself lost my entire filesystem thanks to mojave, it blew away both my macOS and windows partitions and I was left with a completely dead iMac that had to be reformatted and the OS reloaded.

ou don't have to pay for Office

Microsoft office is not free, if you mean iWork, yes apple bundles that with the sale. However, iWork is very inferior to office, take excel vs. numbers. Entering large volumes of data or formulas is downright painful in Numbers. The number of functions and formulas compared to excel is quite surprising as well. Its not a bad spreadsheet if you need a simple spreadsheet but it falls down on large or complex spreadsheets. Just my opinion, others may very disagree, since i'm writing this on a mac fan site.

 

[leman]

I would say it depends on your use case. If you are a specialist who works with a single software suite (or suite family), Windows gives you more hardware choice and more budget flexibility.

For my use case, I don't see any alternative to macOS. Windows is practically unusable in comparison. Linux is still needlessly complicated (I was helping a student in my class just the other day who runs Ubuntu, to install R, and the entire thing was crazy complicated — we had to manually install multiple dev. libraries just to install some common packages).

 

[StralyanPithecus]

Maybe “I hate windows 10” was a too strong reaction....wait... I really hate Windows 10!, I hate what Microsoft has done with the beautiful and stable Windows 7, I hate seeing the missing opportunities with windows evolution that Microsoft left, I hate the mess is right now Windows 10, take a look to the latest upgrades, specially what Microsoft says is still not working. I’m not saying Mac OS is perfect, just try to include one in your domain and see everything going crazy, but as a stand-alone computer is stable, smooth and beautiful. I know that under the GUI windows is a powerful os, I live it everyday at my work, with a tighten and secured domain network working smooth, the wonders of Windows Server, which I love. So the material is already there for Microsoft to have the best OS, but for some mystery reason Microsoft chooses the bright lights and noise like the 80’s boom boxes, instead of quality and stability....

 

[cesarvog]

IT support guy here. Since 1982...
Totally agree that the last Windows version when Microsoft still knew what it was doing was Windows 7. From then on, it was the failed attempt to integrate phones/tablets with computers that resulted in the schizo system that Windows 10 is. On the other hand, the last OS X version Apple still knew what it was doing was probably Lion, or maybe Mountain Lion. The trend to assimilate more and more of the iOS looks and apps is a total disgrace. Desktop and Laptop ("trucks") Computers serve a different purpose, to different type of users, than phones or tablets.
In short, nn my humble oppinion, there was and still there is no need to "dumb down" "truck" computer OSes!

 

[duervo]

I am a lifetime Mac user, and have been a fan for 25 years, but do to various issues with Apple in the past 5-6 years, I have been slowly preparing myself and my family for life outside of the Apple Ecosystem.

One change I have done was to reduce iTunes movies and TV Show purchases, and move my non-DRM collection to PLEX. This might not sound like a big change, but it was for someone that has used iTunes since its launch(BTW I used to like iTunes). i made a few other changes too.

Switching to another computer OS would be a pretty big change for me. I use Windows everyday for work, but I don't like it. It is not as fluid, intuitive, and fast as the Mac OS, but over time, that gap is closing.

10 years ago, I couldn't ever picture switching to Windows, not at all. But, the quality gap between the two OS is closing. I think Windows is getting better while Mac OS started to stumble a few years back.


This is debatable. IMO, "it just works" and Apple are no longer synonymous.


This is true, but the gap is closing.


umm.... What??

Do you mean there are free alternatives? or are you saying Office is free?

Regarding the iTunes TV and Movies decision. I decided the same several years ago. Thankfully, I only ever bought 3 TV shows on there (ones that I just could not find anywhere on physical media), and just a handful of movies. I still have tons of DRM protected movies in there now, but that’s due to physical blu-rays commonly coming with a code for a free digital copy.

The tablet space is where I’m entrenched, but at the moment, I’m ok with that. I’ve used my sister’s Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 for a few hours, and while it is a nice tablet, it’s not nice enough for me to go, “OMG, screw my iPad Pro ... I gotta get one of these!”

 

[Honumaui]

55 years old here like some above agree OS X is sliding but its sliding from such a high position it has a long way to go

I left NT when OS X came out till then I used both even from my original ][e in college to the first 128k mac and so on I was in love with macs but used both being a tech head first loyalty is only to what is best

coming back from NT to go full time into windows for 6 months to really see what it could do I was like dejavu its the same basically 20 steps to do anything the worst file explorer no quick views no tagging files etc. (the 3rd party preview apps suck compared with what is built into OS X
horrid color management in windows being app based etc..

from the creative field as a full time photographer and wife is a full time graphic design its the little things that are so much better for what we do so I would never say OS X is superior I will say its superior for US

but like some of the older folks here it has slipped from what it was !!! both hardware and software both about stability and issues that were so rare and fixed so insane fast and many would have never been allowed to make it to market
I am afraid of where I will be in 5 years ?

I built a win pc recently 7820x chip asus MB 1080 GPU a really nice power supply etc.. its insane and I want to keep using it for what it is but I plan on trying the hackintosh thing with it and dual boot again I like to keep my toes in both OS so I know what's up not what I hear and how they both work for me

I will be buying a new iMac I reckon cause our studios old 3,1 and 5,1 pro I feel are not going to keep going much longer and are starting to get in the way of productivity and I am not holding my breath for the pro and really these days we no longer need xeons and adobe itself is so horrid for making good software the GPU implementation is bad and so on a top end computer is NOT that much faster then our old one

my mac pro 5,1 in adobe is only slower in a couple things (I have a older radeon r9 390 in it) and of course saving and opening on a nVME is insane compared to my standard SSD on the limited bus of the old macs south bridge and so on

so buying a top iMac or Mini would most likely do us fine (the later with a good eGPU)

will be curious where we are in 5 years on both companies !!!!

 

[Thysanoptera]

my mac pro 5,1 in adobe is only slower in a couple things (I have a older radeon r9 390 in it) and of course saving and opening on a nVME is insane compared to my standard SSD on the limited bus of the old macs south bridge and so on

so buying a top iMac or Mini would most likely do us fine (the later with a good eGPU)

With the latest firmware you can have NVMe bootable drive on 5.1 (you could use NVMe as data drive for some time already) and if you go all in on raided setup you can have >5GB/s sequential read/write operation. Plus you can have full power Vega in it. In other words - if you want, you can make the 5.1 the fastest Mac in the world in SSD speed and GPU performance, even blowing the $12k iMac Pro. Give the old chap a chance.

 

[Honumaui]

With the latest firmware you can have NVMe bootable drive on 5.1 (you could use NVMe as data drive for some time already) and if you go all in on raided setup you can have >5GB/s sequential read/write operation. Plus you can have full power Vega in it. In other words - if you want, you can make the 5.1 the fastest Mac in the world in SSD speed and GPU performance, even blowing the $12k iMac Pro. Give the old chap a chance.

yeah I have the latest firmware
yeah I thought of it with the nVME folks are doing but have a dedicated PC for capture one and do some PS work in it
and I really just want new ones since mine are on pretty much 24/7 things like the power supply and the other things I keep mine updated every 1-2 years with new things and this would have been the next step with a new GPU but instead built the PC to also see if it would work and I could work full time with the PC
the r9 390 I put in a while ago I was going to update that
I did update usb3 and other things along the way !
had a areca raid in it for some time and so the PCI is still limited the north/south bridge of course has sever limits compared to todays options and so on not to mention power use and heat and sound and so on time for me to get new stuff

I am going to for sure miss that upgradability also my wifes is a 3,1 she is still using ! (no firmware path to 5,1 for that though) and I have a 1,1 I need to dump also and a old G5 tower even

plan on doing the hackintosh thing with my intel 7820x once I get a new mac

 

[s15119]

I couldn't agree more. MacOS is a joy to use. Windows is work. Linux is just OK. I love my Macs and I love using Mac OS. It just works.

 

[Pangalactic]

I've tried both Windows and OS X, and nowadays there is almost no difference. They function almost the same and have the same apps with just a few exceptions. Pros of each:

OSX:
- great settings menu
- much better update system
- dock > taskbar and program icons on the top of the screen is a better idea
- universal menus in applications
- much better notifications
- a few great applications exclusive to Mac (FCPX, Things/Omnifocus, etc)

Windows:
- volume control sliders for different windows
- better multi-window support
- better wait for it...WINDOW management (like "X" actually closes the window)
- much better for games with a larger variety
- (additional) much better hardware choices with a ton of laptops and PCs
- great battery energy consumption management, which is non-existent on macs
- much better multi-view (when you swipe three fingers up on a mac, don't remember the name)


Regarding "it just works" - again no difference, I've had almost the same number of issues on both platforms.

 

[nouveau_redneck]

Its perfect? I think that's a bit of an exaggeration.

I have been in IT since the 1980s, which predate windows and PCs and the Macintosh and all I can say is that No OS is perfect. Imo, Windows is better suited for the enterprise then macOS for a variety of reasons. Windows has some nice features, and mac OS is far from perfect.

Most of the posts here are commenting are on personal preference (my post included) and there's nothing wrong with that. Both platforms have their positives and negatives, and unlike the OP, Windows has many positives and likewise macOS some negatives. I've enjoyed macOS but I've largely moved off the platform. The Mac does many things well, and I'm not dumping on that or its abilities and while posting in a I hate windows thread, which is obviously a popular theme on a mac forum, it definitely has a number of things going for it.

btw, macOS isn't bug free, just look at the Mojave forum, I myself lost my entire filesystem thanks to mojave, it blew away both my macOS and windows partitions and I was left with a completely dead iMac that had to be reformatted and the OS reloaded.


Microsoft office is not free, if you mean iWork, yes apple bundles that with the sale. However, iWork is very inferior to office, take excel vs. numbers. Entering large volumes of data or formulas is downright painful in Numbers. The number of functions and formulas compared to excel is quite surprising as well. Its not a bad spreadsheet if you need a simple spreadsheet but it falls down on large or complex spreadsheets. Just my opinion, others may very disagree, since i'm writing this on a mac fan site.

Isn't there a Lenovo forum somewhere?

 

[c0ppo]

Isn't there a Lenovo forum somewhere?

Ahhh... Did he hurt your feelings?

 

[Porkchop Sandwich]

I'll second (or more) that Mac OS is a joy to use. Especially Mojave which is the best OS since Snow Leopard IMO. I do not, however, care for some of IOS'esque icons which have made their way into Mac OS over the years. The return of a separate OS update function is a nice return to form..I hope that trend continues despite further IOS integration going forward.

 

[ATC]

Two weeks ago I got my wife a Surface Laptop 2 instead of what she really wanted (a MBA) mainly due to the keyboard issues. This is our first non-Apple PC in over 10 years but I do use W10 daily at work. She didn't mind the SL2 as she's mostly working in VMware and O365 so the OS choice wasn't critical.

I've been using her SL2 for an hour or so daily, just trying to see if I like it and whether a total switch to W10 at home would work for me.

This is totally subjective and I hate to say it but I feel somewhat similar to the OP. There's something intangible about macOS's usability that even though I can do most of the same things in W10, it just doesn't feel as good or as polished an experience. The trackpad on the SL2 is great but it's still a far cry from Apple's in terms of both hardware and gestures. I've had to install a bunch of apps in W10 to try to replicate what's build into macOS and it still feels off and clunky. So much so that I just cannot see a switch in my future.

Having said that, there's a lot to like about the hardware on the SL2, namely the keyboard, windows hello is fantastic, and the screen. My only hope is that Apple gets its s*!t together and fixes the MacBook Pro's KB once and for all, and perhaps add FaceID to the mac.

 

[MBAir2010]

I hope apple rolls up their laptop sleeve and make solid MacBooks soon at competitive prices, but cersei lanister would kiss a dwarf ass before that happens!
Im bending the knee to asus soon forum or no forum

 

[cynics]

I switched to OS X back toward the end of Windows XP's life. It was a breath of fresh air.

Fast forward a few years and I bought a ThinkPad T420 with a Win10 license for cheap ($130) because I always had a fondness for the ThinkPad and always wanted one. Plus only using OS X and Linux made me want to see what Windows had to offer.

So much had improved! Built in malware/antivirus felt lightweight and no longer did I feel the need for a 3rd party solution which to me was just as bad as a virus. Even on an older system at the time with a low end laptop CPU (dual core sandy bridge) system responsiveness was light years beyond the WinXP I remembered. OS search had dramatically improved (no where near spotlight though). Plus it was nice seeing easily available Windows version of software without compiling or just no existent.

However after a while the honeymoon was over and I was micro managing the OS again. Looking for .dll's for this and that. Privacy concerns at every corner. Background task hammering the CPU especially on start up. EVERY TIME I turned on the machine there are updates out the ass. And even with an SSD in RAID 0 (striped) I could feel the bloat building up. I've been meaning to do a fresh install due to what we used to call "Windows Creep". Something I have never had to do with OS X/MacOS, not saying it doesn't exist just not something I've had to deal with.

I can't blame Win10 to be 100% at fault, since its not my daily OS I'm not overly careful with it and I don't do much maintenance and keep the OS clean. However I feel like MacOS is doing 10x as much (iCloud syncing photos, messages, notes, reminders, making phone calls, handoff and continuity, etc etc) with 10x less effort using the same hardware prowess or even less.

While Windows is still a valuable tool for me to have around its still not my preferred OS. Not even close. Although there are A LOT of reasons I would completely understand someone preferring it. Games for example, with DirectX and Vulcan API and first in line GPU driver support its hard to argue MacOS is even comparable. Windows is also typically the goto for non computer related hardware firmware update support (cameras, tools, GPS, drones, etc etc).

Different strokes for different folks. Regardless, outside of obvious financial reasons no one is restricted to Windows OR MacOS. If you have Windows and MacOS (and Linux for that matter) you have the best of all worlds.

 

[nsgr]

On the day that Microsoft Windows has a Unix kernel, then a lot of IT folks will start looking at Windows with another eyes. Windows is still a "Swiss cheese" in terms of security.

The Windows registry is often the case of looking for a needle in the haystack.

Steve Jobs, who was not a fool, realized that the Unix world has already been on the market for a long time, and that security has become more and more reinforced.

Steve Jobs had a basic thought for anyone who wants to get into the technology arena: "No need to reinvent the wheel -> Unix kernel". You do not need to create a kernel from scratch.

The Mac OS (XNU) has a solid foundation (Unix Kernel) and a graphical interface has been placed on top of this solid base.


I prefer to use Linux but Adobe does not have their software to Linux. Between Mac OS and Windows I go Mac OS (UNIX).